Gathering to remember Ian Phillips
A high-powered international banker, honoured for his services to New ZealandUnited States relations, will be remembered in a much more down-home context in Gore tomorrow.
Ian Phillips who sprang from Gore, went on to become executive vice president of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and ran its Americas operation – both North and South America – until 2013.
He died last month in New York, where he had worked for 20 years, on top of fiveyear stints in London and Sydney, four years in Wellington and six months in Singapore.
In 2013 he was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in recognition of a raft of positions strengthening bonds between the two countries, including serving as chairman of the American New Zealand Association, an advisory board member of the US-NZ Council and a board member of the American Friends of Christchurch.
He played host to a series of Prime Ministers when they passed through the Big Apple.
It might also be recorded – if only dutifully – that he had also been deputy chairman of the American Australian Association and deputy chairman of the American Friends of the National Gallery of Australia.
Ian Phillips studied at Otago University, the University of Colorado and the London School of Economics.
Journalist Barry Soper said that although his friend since boyhood had been away from this country for more than 40 years, the MNZM award had reinforced his abiding Kiwiness.
Be kind to each other . . . ‘‘that’s what he was good at’’. Journalist Barry Soper
The two had planned to catch up when Soper was in New York covering Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s visit with baby-in-tow to the Big Apple. But two days before a planned lunch together he heard Phillips had had a fall, a brain seizure, and was in a coma. He died less than a week later, his far-flung family at his bedside.
Soper, who daily visited the unit, said he was pretty sure he knew what Phillips would want to have said to them.
Live life for today because you never know what’s around the corner. Live every day as though it could be your last.
And be kind to each other . . . ‘‘that’s what he was good at’’.
The pair had been friends since they were five, a natural empathy forged through the tennis club . . . ‘‘and through naughty schoolboy behaviour, like sneaking up into the hedge, cigarettes in hand, where no one could see us, and talking about what life may hold for us.
‘‘Ian used to say that one day we may get our names in the paper.’’
On Saturday afternoon, at Croydon Lodge in Gore, friends will gather to remember that boyhood and all the good times since, Soper said.
Ian’s daughters Nicole (New York) and Zara (Melbourne) will be there, along with his siblings Judge Kevin Phillips, Mary Phillips and Su Farrow. His son Harrison will be back in Connecticut with the best sort of excuse – his pregnant partner.